Pure quantity, the being that suppresses in unity, plurality and continuity: the fight against the threat of strangement

Abstract

The category of Quantity, in Hegel, is developed in such a way as to help in the characterization of what is understood by being. In addition to liquidity, closure and inflexibility, typical of an understanding limited to unambiguous and finalist exclusivity, the being presents itself through new unfolding, which gives it openness. Flexibility, which thus characterizes being, has, in breaking the rigidity of univocity, in the interruption of immediate exclusivism and in the impediment of finalist discontinuity, the status of being for itself subsumed as Quantity. As uni, pluri and continuous, it is a magnitude that describes the unos beyond a mere superficial representation. To what extent is it possible to conceive being, by going beyond the mere faculty of understanding substance in the understanding, as a single, plural and continuous Quantity?